In Funky Denim Wonderland

Rock Me on the Water
Ronald Brownstein

I was feeling more kvetch-y than usual when I started this post, a state I attributed to the unusually cold temperature and my self-imposed house arrest.  Fast forward a couple of weeks and my mood has improved along with the weather.

So I may end up being more charitable than when I started writing. We’ll see about that.

One thing I will not do is abandon my decision to

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Forces of Chaos and Anarchy

We Should Have Seen it Coming: From Reagan to Trump–A Front-Row Seat to a Political Revolution
Gerald Seib

I have gone missing but I have not stopped reading.

That, I suppose, is a statement always at risk of being true. If so, then it’s more true than ever lately as I find my free time diminished and my workday lengthened by an

Turning to Despair

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
Anne Case and Angus Deaton

Joseph Heller once said the effect he was striving for in his second novel, Something Happened, was for the reader to feel like a piece of metal banged into a new shape by the repeated blows of a ball-peen hammer.

I don’t recall feeling that way after reading the novel, but the far more than 400 blows delivered in this book

I Had a Real Good Mother and Father

Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir
Christopher Buckley

When it comes to enshrining the obvious, you have to acknowledge the preeminence of the US Supreme Court. “Death is different,” they told us in 1976. The clarification hardly seems necessary.

Yet death, that most unwelcome of drop-by visitors, often seems to bring out the best in some writers,

He’s Been Tensing Up His Arms and His Legs

The Best American Sportswriting 2009
Leigh Montville, Guest Editor; Glenn Sharp, Series Editor

I am hopelessly clumsy though not quite an oaf. If one of the seven intelligences is bodily-kinesthetic, that’s the one in which I came up short.

The basics–walking, for instance–I find manageable,  but much more than that presents a challenge. Even the sorts of things that supposedly benefit from drills

I’m Gonna Go Fishing

Surfcaster’s Quest
Roy Rowan

It’s just a fortnight or so past the Feast of St. Stephen,  with sub-zero wind chills and the remnants of a snowstorm lying about less than deep and crisp and even. So, what better time to turn one’s thoughts to fishing?

Allow me to cut to the chase. The present volume offers

Lost in the Supermarket

Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America
Michael Ruhlman

Like the singer in Mick Jones‘ lyrics, I am quite capable of getting lost in a grocery store. I don’t even need a special offer to entice me. The Clash may have been commenting on consumer society. I just like to food shop.

That, I suppose, could be construed as evidence of just

Tell Me a Story

Floating Off the Page: The Best Stories from the Wall Street Journal’s
“Middle Column”
Ken Wells, ed.

By the time I found my first job in an advertising agency I knew I had to play catch-up. Fast.

Until then, I’d been treading water. A sales job. A low-level client-side job. Never really sure if I was making my way in the world or if anything I was doing was ever

We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang

How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them
Jason Stanley

I’m burdened by an unusually retentive memory best defined by what it is not.

I am not one of those Marilu Henner-like people who can recall the events of any calendar day they’ve lived through. Nor do I have a purely eidetic memory, although

Hit It Then Quit It

The Best American Sportswriting 1994
Tom Boswell, Guest Editor; Glenn Stout, Series Editor

Why,  you may wonder, is anybody spending time reading an anthology of sportswriting from 1994? Even if the contents were confined to coverage of the Little League World Series the subjects would be on the cusp of middle age.

So what gives? I attribute its appearance to a particular